


Pinch

by ontaemin



Category: SHINee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Crime, Drama, M/M, One Shot, Pick Pocket!Taemin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 05:24:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8358952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ontaemin/pseuds/ontaemin
Summary: It's been so long of this. So long of snatching and stealing and pawning off things that don't belong to his greedy hands Taemin's not sure if it's really for money anymore. Watches and jewelry and stolen ID's no longer sold as a means for life but nearly feeling like it's just for fun - for shits and giggles. Taemin's not sure when it became like that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Ah! More ontae! This is pretty... odd. Though now that I think about it nothing I write is all that "normal" so who cares. I really enjoyed writing this as it was kinda a different look at Taemin and Jinki as characters, and they're always fun to write anyways. Little warning this is a bit dark but I don't write too much fluff, do I? Again, this is written at 3:30 a.m. as all my fics seem to be so my apologies for any mistakes. 
> 
> I'm leaving for Chicago in a few hours and anytime I'm in a new place I always get really inspired to write, so I hope to post something again very soon. Please look forward to it, and enjoy this if you can. Feedback is always appreciated ^^ xx
> 
> tw for: theft, crime, and violence

It was sticky. Steamy and humid sulphur filled air. Subway walls lined with carbon monoxide and sweat - the stench of hundreds of different lives all packed into one cramped little station and an even more compact cart, a sea of strangers. A sea business ventures.

Heartbeats were the scary parts. Sneaking fingers past thick jackets and blazers of business men, privileged students and fashionable women, really just anyone who looked like they carried an extra buck - it had some complications. But they didn't matter all too much. What people would assume you fear you don't - it's social side that was bone chilling. More so than getting caught with items that didn't belong to you or being late after someone had already made their rounds on the crowd you decided were your victims for the night. But the empathy, the heart of it all, that was terrifying. 

To make a way though this kind of business requires one to put their heart to the side, if only for just a moment. Taemin used the best excuses he could find - that these people were rich, they were privileged and didn't need that extra cash, didn't need their credit cards or watches, that he was doing good, a robin hood esque duty of taking the rich down one notch to help the needy, to help himself. But those few words can only stretch so far. Taught over Taemin's mind as he slides another watch off the wrist of an elderly man who sat himself down on the seat beside him, not knowing just how unlucky he was to have made that choice. When Taemin slides past it's as if that thin veil of reasoning slips just an inch more, and guilt threatens to flood his stomach like sickly bile.

A pile of leather and expensive brand logo patterned fabrics sat in the middle of Taemin's apartment, along with watches, keychains, coin purses, passports and anything else his nimble fingers could loop around long enough to evict from their rightful owners pockets. On his dirty carpet amidst empty take out containers and general clutter sat all of his treasures. It seemed so anonymous looking at the items - not much to decipher except maybe the gender and age of the person who carried them but that was all. They lie as material objects like props on set of some horrible, horrible movie where Taemin is most likely the villain. It's a wonder the criminals are never the protagonists. 

But in flipping through bound leather and zippers and coins digging for credit cards and cash upwards of the price of a carton of milk Taemin finds stories. He finds the faces of who he was hurting. Small photos of children and wives and parents and grand parents - friends and family and business cards, receipts from places so popular Taemin wondered if the sheet of paper he held had been dispensed while he stood in line behind them. All tucked into wallets and small purses for Taemin to find as some sort of punishment for his horrible deeds. Keychains from cities he only ever wished to visit - Paris and New York and Toronto and Moscow - trinkets easily fitted onto key rings that held so many memories that didn't belong to the thief, so many stories of people smiling and thanking friends and family for bringing back souvenirs from other countries, smiling to themselves as they bought them. It was such a pain that valuables sat in the hands of people with such complex lives. 

But Taemin had a life too. He had an apartment and rent - he had a stomach that needed to be filled and no amount of guilt could make him forget that. Holding no other profitable skill it seems as though he had only one choice, and that choice was to be just what he was, and maybe that eased the pain just a bit. And a slight consolation was all Taemin really needed. 

Most people aren't smart enough to press charges. Most people catch the thief red handed and assume it's his first time - that he's just a kid looking for some cigarette money and they throw him around a bit to prove a point, maybe shout obscenities, but those aren't hurtful the way parole would be, so Taemin's thankful. 

But he does pull stupid stunts. Taemin is young and Taemin is mischievous and just the mere thought of getting away with stealing a cops badge pumps adrenaline through the kids veins, thick like heroin into his bloodstream like it was an easily abused substance. As a knee presses against his shoulder blades Taemin wonders if maybe he is addicted. But a cop who places that much pressure on someone with a body frame of his clearly isn't in the right mind, and Taemin smells the scent of malt liquor as a warning is growled into his ear, until he's left alone on the pavement - hurt, but with a clean record. 

A broken rib never felt so good. 

The times he gets caught lead up to just that - a warning, be it verbal or otherwise. Maybe he's lucky. Maybe Taemin's mom was right and his face is too pretty to ever be guilty. The thief bats his eyelashes and puckers his lips and finds a forty-two year old woman lower her leather covered hand into a sympathetic sigh. "What led you down this horrible path?" As if Taemin deserved pity. 

And it's been so long of this. So long of snatching and stealing and pawning off things that don't belong to his greedy hands Taemin's not sure if it's really for money anymore. Watches and jewelry and stolen ID's no longer sold as a means for life but nearly feeling like it's just feels like it's for shits and giggles. Taemin's not sure when it became like that. Because it really, truly, felt like a game now. 

What changed everything was himself. Not a revelation but a human mirror. Brown hair and thin eyes made their way through cramped a subway cart when the thief wasn't a thief but only on his way home, and the one who now worked the crowd decided Taemin was a smart option. So maybe not a mirror, because Taemin was good enough to know who not to pick, and if he ever saw himself he wouldn't even dare to try anything in front of him, knowing just by his demeanour that whatever you could have lifted might be lifted from you the second he passed by. But a thief nonetheless. 

Taemin was kind about it. He was older but younger in the profession - a rookie or maybe just messy, he wasn't too sure, but his fingers touched too often and anxiety leaked from him like lighter fluid, ready to be set by any small spark of suspicion from his victims. The vicious route could have been fun - Taemin could have caught him, quite literally red handed and pressed his thumb into the tendons on his wrist as he held up his proverbial prize, the mans stubby fingers dangling with the wallet still warm from Taemin's chest. He could have made it painful for him. Made it impossible for him ever to work a subway again without thinking about him and knowing this was Taemin's crowd - not his. But from the look in his eyes, the eye contact any skilled thief would know to avoid told something of his soul, and that something hurt Taemin's own. So public shaming was off the table for today. 

Of course he couldn't walk free. He needed to be taught a lesson even if Taemin wasn't too confident in giving such education, it still needed to be done - for his own good. 

When Taemin found himself in an alleyway on his way to follow the man home his fingers twisted in the collar of his jacket, drawing a shrill screech from the man. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" He spat, the man stumbling to the ground as he was pulled back. "You ever hear about not working other people's terf? You fucking new in town or what?"

And maybe he was. Maybe this was his first night in the city and he knew nothing, but this was not his first time on the street. Taemin found this out the hard way as his knuckles collided with the peak of his cheekbone. But there was uncertainty. Uncertainty and anxiety as he hovered over Taemin's hunched figure, unsure that he himself really was the cause of the blood dripping down the younger boys face. "Shit - fuck, are you alright?"

"You just punched me in the fucking face, you think I'm alright asshole?" 

A very obvious rush of guilt floods over the mans face as he winces. Wary hands frozen in the air as he kicks himself mentally. "I'm so sorry... I thought you were gonna mug me."

"I'm not inclined to stealing things through means of violence." Taemin grumbles, his hand holding his cheeks as it throbs, though he's less in pain and more frustrated with the fact that this guys initial response to being confronted is to punch someone out, but he doesn't mention it. "Can I have my wallet back? And stop working my fucking crowd or I'll slit your throat."

Bambi stares back. Big, wet, clueless black eyes trained on Taemin's as if he had no idea what he was talking about. As if Taemin couldn't see all the things he had lifted in pain sight. As if Taemin couldn't tell what was about to happen as a result of what he had done. 

Sympathy is a disease. Maybe a disorder, because Taemin can't seem to cure himself. When tears find their way down a strangers face Taemin's can't find much room in his heart for anything but his pain. So thick through his blood Taemin wonders how he ever felt adrenaline was strong. He cries in an alleyway as life goes on outside of it, a man so much larger and so much stronger physically covers his face in embarrassment as he throws Taemin's wallet to the ground, and that's when it really hits that this poor excuse of a profession hurts the workers more than the victims. And for that, he's sorry. 

Jinki. Jinki Jinki Jinki. "Lee Jinki, uh, yeah. I'm 26." When you put a name to someone you would have hurt anonymously otherwise it makes you wonder why you would ever do it in the first place. 

A bad deed never goes unrecognized. Not one person goes home and realizes they don't have their wallet without feeling some strong, negative emotion. And for awhile Taemin preferred that to good deeds, because more often than not, nobody would even bat an eyelash at those. 

But it's not everybody Taemin is concerned with. Or not who he should be, at least, because they don't matter - they're just background noise. Amidst everything that's important in life one person ignoring a kind gesture seems like a spec of dust on a plasma screen television, it's there, but it's not going to ruin the big picture. That seems to be something that took Taemin a long time to learn. Maybe it's a hard pill to swallow or maybe it was a way of self flogging for his unsavoury lifestyle but the medicine went down, and went down a little faster thanks to someone he would have never paid mind to if it weren't for his own problems. 

"It's an addiction." Taemin's says over a cup of coffee. Jinki's eyes still glow red and Taemin wonders if his stomach will ever rid itself of the guilt that plagues him looking at that innocent face. "It was for money - for a living, but, Christ, I was never in if for that." With a quiver of Jinki's brow Taemin casts his gaze down, unable to handle one more second of that kind of pain. "You need to stop doing this while you can, Jinki. For your own good."

"I've never gotten a lecture from a 23 year old." Jinki's laugh sounds like angels singing. "But I have to say, you are pretty wise, so thank you."

And Jinki's smile hits Taemin like a brick wall. Like all the bad deeds had piled up in front of this older man for him to dissect and he ignored it all. Jinki's long eyelashes batted against Taemin's filth of a life and his eyes creased into a smile, kind, sincere, and sobering. Most people didn't care because they didn't know - friends would wonder where the money would come from and his parents would worry, but nobody paid mind. Nobody wanted to know and when they did the result was nowhere near as heart warming as what received from Jinki. And perhaps that was Jinki's good deed to him. 

Perhaps Jinki might just have been his turning point. If he was Jinki's or not, he wasn't sure, but Taemin knows since they had met neither had income from anything but legal means. A cure or a promise or something that didn't seem real - was. It wasn't the easy route but it was the right one - and Taemin was happy. Life still wasn't the best because something as inescapable as poverty and unemployment never got better with wishful thinking. It was hard work and harder than Taemin had ever worked. It was spine aching and tear jerking but none of it mattered if Jinki was there to rub his back and kiss the tears away. Not much mattered when you knew looking into the eyes of that one person meant you would feel more safe than you ever could, even in the worst of neighbourhoods. 

And the retired thief can honestly say, from all that he has witnessed, that this love had changed him - that Jinki had changed him - for the better, and forever. And the only thing Taemin finds himself stealing on the subway now are kisses from Jinki's lips. 

\- END -


End file.
